The 10 most absurd published scientific papers

This article was taken from the April issue of Wired UK magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online

Not many grad students see the funny side of science. Meredith Carpenter and Lillian Fritz-Laylin, from the Molecular and Biology Department at UC Berkeley, not only see it but blog it. Their site, ncbirofl.com (National Center for Biotechnology Information, Rolling On the Floor Laughing), is a repository for absurd published scientific papers. Here is their top ten...

Optimising the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel. (Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition)

More information than you ever wanted: does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy? (Cyberpsychology and Behavior)

Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull? (Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine)

The nature of navel fluff. (Medical Hypotheses)

Edited by George Barrow

Comments

For links to the abstracts of these articles, check out today's NCBI ROFL post: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/03/10/ncbi-rofl-top-10-absurd-papers-from-2009/

NCBI ROFL

Mar 11th 2010

Wired has obviously never heard of "Annals of Improbable Research" http://improbable.com/ Which is a poublished journal of absurd and improbably research. Welcome to the party about 15 years too late.

Wyrdone

Mar 11th 2010

Oddly enough, I can get behind the one about braining people with beer bottles. A considerable number of people imitate stupid movie stunts. If this one is popular enough, it's worthwhile to check how bad the effects are in the real world.

Kind of like seeing how easily cars really explode, except much dumber.

Kizor

Mar 11th 2010

How about:How to swat a fruit fly.

I'm serious, some student at a California University is writing his Phd on how to swat and kill a flying Fruit Fly .

I read this on the BBC News website, he never replied to my email when I enquired, if there were more important research he could be doing. LOL

@Kizor: The effects are not nearly as damaging as you would think. A buddy's housemate likes to get pissed, go into the front yard, and break bottles over the back of his head as a party trick. Having seen the stunt myself, I'd rate it somewhere between stubbing your toe and hitting your funny bone, judging by his reaction.

Xertin

Mar 12th 2010

Oh come on, several of these papers are not absurd. What, research into bee communication, adolescent alcohol use, visual stimulus discrimination, and bat reproduction is absurd? Maybe you should make the distinction between funny article titles and science you deem not worthwhile.

Ben Saunders

Mar 12th 2010

I once read a paper that began: "Romantic love has been reported to be an important factor in human relationships." Then the halfwit who wrote this drivel actually gave three journal references to support his statement.

Carl

Mar 12th 2010

To Wyrdone - I guess the folks at Wired don't know the rule that if something has been done in one place once, it can NEVER be done anywhere else, ever. Thanks for bringing them the news. I guess they'll just shut down their website now....

Lethe

Mar 12th 2010

Be careful! Several article seems to have funny names specially in the field of psychology (e.g. "Swearing as a response to pain."). Human behaviour studies relates to that...This is a careless and frivolous article.

LOKY

Mar 12th 2010

My favorite is "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon". (http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/09/dead-salmon-responds-to-portra.html) They showed dead fish pictures of human family life and recorded their reactions, to prove a methodological point about brain scanning technology.

Chris

Mar 12th 2010

Items 3 and 9 don't look like absurd research to me. Perhaps this piece was aimed at the laugh-at-potty-words set.

MrPetkus

Mar 12th 2010

Thanks for the list.Why havent you linked it to the papers themselves?Thats only we can see if the research was indeed, 'absurd'.